Why MYSTERIES? Because that is the genre I read. Why PARADISE? Because that is where I live.
Among other things, this blog, the result of a 2008 New Year's resolution, will act as a record of books that I've read, and random thoughts.

A woman dies in her sleep in a houseboat on the Thames; the apparent
cause of death, an unflued gas heater. It all seems straightforward,
but DI Kathy Kolla isn't convinced.

Unfortunately both Kathy and DCI Brock are up against an aggressive
new Commander who seems to have a different agenda, opposing their
investigation in favour of emerging technologies over the traditional
policing methods. Coppers like Brock and Kolla who have reservations are
being squeezed out.

To make matters worse, there's a new Task Force moving in on their
patch, and a brutal killer, Butcher Jack Bragg, to be tracked down and
caught. It's one of Brock and Kolla's bloodiest investigations yet.
In this heart-thumping new novel Brock and Kolla are under pressure;
it's a clash between the menacing ever-present eye of computer
surveillance versus the explosive threat of a man with a meat cleaver
and a grudge.

If I wasn't convinced of it before, this title firmly sets Barry Maitland in my mind as an Australian crime fiction author up there with the best. His writing is quietly assured, and although there are elements of the plot that strain the bounds of credibility, Maitland is very persuasive. Poor Kathy Kolla seems to be in the firing line in more ways than one in THE RAVEN'S EYE, and both she and David Brock are very plausible and likeable characters.

If you share my tastes, then you'll enjoy this thriller written by an Australian author but set mainly in London.If you haven't yet met this pair of sleuths then you have a manageable series of 12 titles to tackle. And you know what I will say: read them in order! Although to be honest there is not much overlap from title to title so you can read them as stand alones.

From bestselling author and award-winning journalist Caroline Overington
comes another thought-provoking and heart-rending story, that reaches
from the heart of Bondi to a small village in Tanzania.

Shortly
after 9.30 in the morning, a young man walks into Surf City, Bondi's
newest shopping complex. He's wearing a dark grey hoodie - and a bomb
around his neck.

Just a few minutes later he is locked in a shop on the upper floor. And trapped with him are four innocent bystanders.

For
police chaplain Paul Doherty, called to the scene by Senior Sergeant
Boehm, it's a story that will end as tragically as it began. For this is
clearly no ordinary siege. The boy, known as Ali Khan, seems as
frightened as his hostages and has yet to utter a single word.

The
seconds tick by for the five in the shop: Mitchell, the talented
schoolboy; Mouse, the shop assistant; Kimmi, the nail-bar technician;
and Roger Callaghan, the real estate agent whose reason for being in
Bondi that day is far from innocent.

And of course there's Ali
Khan. Is he the embodiment of evil, as the villagers in his Tanzanian
birthplace believe? Or just an innocent boy, betrayed at every turn, who
just wants a place to call home?

My Take

The story takes readers through the background of all the people who are locked in the shop with Tanzaniaan refugee Ali Khan. The narrator is former Catholic priest, police chaplain Paul Doherty, who contacts each of the people locked in the shop after the event for trauma counselling.We benefit from the research he has done about each of these people.

Part of what each reader must ask herself is how you would react in this situation. The shopping centre is in lock down with the voice of Senior Sergeant Boehm booming instructions over a loud speaker system. And yet Ali Khan is showing no sign of understanding.

The book also broaches issues with which Australians are familiar, or are we? Do we really know how refugees are treated under the Australian border protection systems? What are the detention centres housing refugees and asylum seekers really like? Why was Ali Khan, a genuine refugee who has an Australian passport, in Baxter and Villawood for four years? This is a book that will make you think.

And Paul Doherty has his own problems too, his own crisis of faith, which perhaps does not make him the best narrator.

NO PLACE LIKE HOME is written as a thriller, and, true to form, we do not find out what happened in the last minutes of the siege until the very end.

Belinda Lawrence returns to her home town of Melbourne, to discover a murder that's close to her heart.

A murder which leads to the seat of political power, Parliament House.

The various threads of deceit and intrigue are gradually
unravelled and, with Hazel Whitby at her side, Belinda is confronted by
warring political factions.

The mystery deepens with the discovery of a priceless
historical item, of value to both political powers, and which places
Belinda's life in jeopardy.

The gregarious Major;
An enigmatic university Professor;
Two colourful antique sellers;
Eccentric retired music-hall entertainers;
And Belinda's partner, Mark Sallinger...
...all immersed in the scheming and covert encounters besieging Belinda as she solves her most challenging mystery.
Book Five in the Belinda Lawrence mystery series.

My Take

I think the author's decision to base this novel in his, and Belinda Lawrence's, home town of Melbourne is a very successful one, as is his basing one of the plot lines on a piece of Melbourne's colourful history. It also considers the ever present Republican debate, a very real Australian political divide.

A WICKED DESIGN is a well constructed cozy with a heroine who has grown in stature with every outing in this series. Belinda Lawrence and her antique dealer friend Hazel Whitby are very realistically drawn, as is Belinda's fiance Mark Sallinger.

I think each one has seen Brian's writing become more assured.
All the books are available in print and as e-books.

My rating: 4.3

About the author

Brian Kavanagh (b. 1935) is an accredited life member of the Australian Film Editors
Guild & a member of the Australian Society of Authors. He has many
years experience in the Australian Film Industry in areas of production,
direction, editing and writing.

His editing credits include THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH,
ODD ANGRY SHOT, THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND, LONG WEEKEND, SEX IS A
FOUR-LETTER WORD and the recent comedy, DAGS.

He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Australian
Screen Editors Guild and is an accredited member. An Australian Film
Institute award for Best Editing for FROG DREAMING (USA title THE
QUEST).

19 December 2013

Synopsis (Audible)
In Full Dark House, Christopher Fowler tells the story of both
the first and last case of an unlikely pair of crime fighters - and how
along the way they changed the face of detection.

A present-day
bombing rips through London and claims the life of 80-year-old detective
Arthur Bryant. For his partner John May, it means the end of a
partnership that lasted over half a century and an eerie echo back to
the Blitz of World War II when they first met. Desperately searching for
clues to the killer’s identity, May finds his old friend’s notes of
their very first case and becomes convinced that the past has returned
... with a killing vengeance.

It begins when a dancer in a risqué new production of Orpheus in Hell
is found without her feet. Suddenly, the young detectives are plunged
in a bizarre gothic mystery that will push them to their limits - and
beyond. For in a city shaken by war, a faceless killer is stalking
London’s theaters, creating his own kind of sinister drama. And it will
take Arthur Bryant’s unorthodox techniques and John May’s dogged police
work to catch a criminal whose ability to escape detection seems almost
supernatural - a murderer who even decades later seems to have claimed
the life of one of them ... and is ready to claim the other.

Filled with startling twists, unforgettable characters, and a mystery that will keep you guessing, Full Dark House is a witty, heartbreaking, and all-too-human thriller about the hunt for an inhuman killer.

My take

World War II served Arthur Bryant and John May very well. It meant that when they were barely out of their teens these two became the principal investigators of the Peculiar Crimes Unit. It is the crimes that are peculiar but one could be forgiven for thinking that Arthur Bryant in particular is a little peculiar. As Bryant ruffles feathers with the gaucheness of youth some of the victims of the crimes wonder if the police force might not have more senior investigators available.

The narrative flits effortlessly between the events during the Blitz and the current day when John May tries to work out whose nerve Bryant touched that resulted in his apparent death from a suitcase bomb when he was researching their first case for his memoirs.

I have enjoyed all that I have read from this series, the narrator in the audio books, Tim Goodman, has become for me the voice of Arthur Bryant. Christopher Fowler uses quite quirky historical settings and this case the main action is set in a West End theatre. The production is Offenbach's Orpheus, designed to be a morale booster in bombed London. A succession of deaths threaten the closure of the theatre, while the Peculiar Crimes Unit faces imminent disbanding as the death toll mounts.

I don't suppose that I should have been surprised that, out 133 books read so far this year, 50 of them are by British authors. After all, last year it was 60 out of 142.
I'll have a couple more to add to my list by year's end. (I'm currently enjoying an audio version of Christopher Fowler's FULL DARK HOUSE, the beginning of the Bryant & May series.)

“Even at Bertram’s, thought Miss Marple, interesting things could
happen...” Impeccable service and grandeur at the hotel, but Miss Marple
didn’t anticipate the eccentric guest who went to the airport on the
wrong day…

One of Miss Marple’s few outings from St Mary
Mead, this time she’s holidaying in London, when a certain eccentric
guest sets off a violent chain of events.

Bertram’s, the fictional hotel featured in the story, is thought to
have been inspired by Brown’s Hotel in London, a favourite haunt of
Agatha Christie, but could also have been based on the Mayfair Hotel,
Fleming’s.

The story was adapted for TV starring Joan Hickson in 1987. BBC Radio
4 dramatised the story in 2004 and it was adapted again for TV in 2007,
this time featuring Geraldine McEwan as the elderly sleuth, and
included substantial changes from the novel.

My Take
I have seen the TV versions of the novel several times and in fact did wonder whether it was worth my while reading the book, it being next in my list for the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.

I hadn't realised how much the story had been modified for television, with characters left out, and others inserted. There are a number of plot changes.

The main import of the novel is that nothing at Bertram's Hotel in 1955 is as its seems: all is a facade, from the appearance of the hotel, to the people who visit it, to the people who run it. Miss Marple realises that it is a mistake to try to step back to pre-war days. In fact the Bertram's Hotel she remembers is much older than that, a memory from her childhood.

The story also illustrates Agatha Christie's conviction of the prevalence of organised crime rings that underpinned facades of normality. The police inspector who carries out the investigation into Bertram's shady dealings and the disappearance of Canon Pennyfather is an avuncular old chap who has seen it all, but he is not the same as the bouncing lad of the television production. Nor is there the romantic element that TV gave us for public consumption.

I don't think Miss Marple comes out of thebook particularly well - Christie portrays her as an old busybody who eavesdrops on people's conversations when she can. On the other hand she does recognise evil when she sees it and she demonstrates an understanding of the foibles of the elderly. For example she knows that Canon Pennyfather had mistaken the day he should be flying to Lucerne, and when he returns to Bertram's Hotel, she instantly knows he is not the person she saw descending the stairs at 3 am.

Known as the father of forensics and a likely influence on Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, real-life police inspector James McLevy is here reinvented
by David Ashton in a thrilling mystery, Shadow of the Serpent.

1880,
Edinburgh, Election fever grips the city. But while the rich and
educated argue about politics, in the dank wynds of the docks it's a
struggle just to stay alive. When a prostitute is brutally murdered,
disturbing memories from thirty years ago are stirred in McLevy who is
soon lured into a murky world of politics, perversion and deception -
and the shadow of the serpent.

My Take

A Financial Times review wrote 'McLevy is a sort of Victorian Morse with a heart, prowling the mean
wynds and tenements of the endless fascinating city. David Ashton
impeccably evokes Edinburgh so vividly that you can feel the cold in
your bones and the menace of the Old Town's steep cobbles and dark
corners'.

I'm not sure I would go as far as the Victorian Morse bit, but James McLevy as recreated by David Ashton is certainly an interesting character. Ashton's recreation of Victorian Edinburgh makes me glad those times have passed. The plot of SHADOW OF A SERPENT is a complex one and contains some authentic-feeling portrayals of Disraeli, Gladstone and Queen Victoria. Someone is out to prevent William Gladstone from becoming Prime Minister at any cost. Ripper-like murders of prostitutes have begun on Edinburgh streets.

I think SHADOW OF THE SERPENT has some of the problems of debut title: the plot is at times too tortuous and a little dark. The historical details at times take over, putting the crime fiction into the background. There a few threads that seem to me to go unresolved.

15 December 2013

It will probably come as no surprise to blog followers that over 25% of the titles that I have read this year have been by Australian authors.
Many of the titles listed below are set in Australia too.
And most of them are crime fiction.

The police urgently need Harry Hole
A
killer is stalking Oslo's streets. Police officers are being slain at
the scenes of crimes they once investigated, but failed to solve. The
murders are brutal, the media reaction hysterical.

But this time, Harry can't help anyoneFor
years, detective Harry Hole has been at the centre of every major
criminal investigation in Oslo. His dedication to his job and his
brilliant insights have saved the lives of countless people. But now,
with those he loves most facing terrible danger, Harry can't protect
anyone.

Least of all himself.

My Take

A Jo Nesbo novel is never a light read, and at 518 pages POLICE bears this out. It has taken me over a week to read, partly because I didn't seem to be able to digest more than about 50 pages at a time.

This is not a novel you can read as a stand-alone either. There are references to Harry's earlier cases, and indeed remembering a little about some of them seems crucial to making sense of POLICE. There are characters such as the Chief of Police Mikael Bellmann and Harry Hole's lover Rakel who provide a thread of continuity from one novel to another.

Harry Hole's clear up rate is legendary in the Oslo Police and so we know that if he can't work out who the Cop Killer is, no one can. But Harry is no longer officially part of the police force, which is a conundrum. And for about a third of the novel we are wondering exactly where Harry is.

I came away from POLICE wondering if every thread had been satisfactorily tied off. Certainly corruption is not confined to the criminals and the official version of events is not always what actually happened. Underneath is Harry Hole's version of justice.

We are delighted to announce two new novels from Jo Nesbø writing under the pen name Tom Johansen. The first book, Blood on Snow, will be published in autumn 2014 with the second, Blood On Snow 2 (working title), to follow in spring 2015. Further information about both books and Tom Johansen will be revealed in early 2014.

It seems also that, though translated as #8 in "the Oslo sequence" POLICE is actually #10 in the series.

I also saw this among the site's news items.

30 September 2013

Jo has four titles on the bestseller lists in Norway this week. Doctor Proctor and the Great Gold Robbery (Doctor Proctor #4, published in 2012) is No. 1 and Police is No. 8 on the official list for fiction.Phantom (Harry Hole #9, published in 2011) is No. 11 and Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder (Doctor Proctor #1, published in 2007) is No. 14 on the official paperback list .

9 December 2013

With not many vintage mystery books on the immediate horizon, I'm declaring myself "finished" for 2013.
I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't really get much variety into my reading as you'll see from the list below.

All books must have been written before 1960 and be from the mystery category (crime fiction, detective fiction, espionage, etc.). The challenge was hosted by Bev at MY READER'S BLOCK

There are a number of categories and each book can only count for one category. I aimed for 8 or 16 categories and read 8

7 December 2013

If you are looking for books to give for Christmas here are a few suggestions from my best reads for 2013.
There are some Australian and New Zealand authors among them.
Many are available from Amazon in paperback or for Kindle.

5 December 2013

Had this book not been chosen by my face-to-face reading group, I probably wouldn't have come across it, but I'm glad I did. Karen Foxlee is a new-to-me Australian author.

Apart from anything else, the structure of the book is unusual and interesting. After the annual Harvest Parade in which they both participated, two girls are missing in a coastal sugar cane town in mid-northern Queensland.

Each of the chapters is headed with the name of a stitch used in tailoring or embroidery.
e.g.
Anchor Stitch
Oyster Stitch
Catch Stitch
Straight Stitch
Binding Stitch
Spider Web Stitch etc. etc. (I didn't know there were so many stitches)

And the reader's attention is captured straight away in the opening of the first chapter, Anchor Stitch:

Will you forgive me if I tell you the ending? There’s a girl. She’s standing where the park outgrows itself and the manicured lawn gives way to longer grass and the stubble of rocks. She is standing in no-man’s-land, between the park and the place where the mill yards begin.

It’s night and the cane trains are still.

It is unbearably humid and she feels the sweat sliding down her back and she presses her hands there into the fabric to stop the sensation that is ticklishly unpleasant. She lifts up the midnight dress to fan her legs. It’s true, the dress is a magical thing, it makes her look so heavenly.

After a couple of pages from this narrator, the chapter continues with the story from the beginning. Rose Lovell arrives in town with her father at the Paradise caravan park where they will live for the next few months. She meets Pearl Kelly in the next day or so when she goes to school. They will be the central characters of the story, but there is also Edie Baker, an eccentric dressmaker with a history, Rose's alcoholic father, and Paul Rendell who runs a Book Exchange in the back of his mother's shop.

The first chapter sets the pattern for the rest. There is always a preface from the narrator, helpfully written in italics, and then the continuing story. There's the feeling of two paths, with the main story slowly catching up to the point where the narrator's brief snippets begin.

The two teenage girls are trying to establish their identities. Rose has been on the move with her father for a number of years after the apparent drowning suicide of her mother. She has had little chance to establish friends, and she connects surprisingly well with both Pearl and Edie, who agrees to help her make her dress for the Harvest Parade. Pearl is trying to work out who she is too, looking for her Russian father, by writing to men surnamed Orlov in Moscow. As Rose and Edie make the dress, so the tragedies of Edie's life emerge.

After a stuttering start, the book gathers pace. The author drops information all over the place and there are many little stories for the reader to piece together. It is a very effective technique.

So for me, Karen Foxlee is a new author to watch out for. A great book, not just a coming of age novel, but a well constructed mystery on many levels.

My rating: 4.7

The author's debut title, THE ANATOMY OF WINGS, published in 2009 looks interesting too. (My local library lists it as teen fiction).

Ten-year-old Jennifer Day lives in a small mining town full of secrets. Trying to make sense of the sudden death of her teenage sister, Beth, she looks to the adult world around her for answers.

As she recounts the final months of Beth’s life, Jennifer sifts through the lies and the truth, but what she finds are mysteries, miracles, and more questions. Was Beth’s death an accident? Why couldn’t Jennifer—or anyone else—save her?

1 December 2013

Fred Scully waits at the arrival gate of an international airport,
anxious to see his wife and seven-year-old daughter. After two years in
Europe they are finally settling down.
He sees a new life before them, a
stable outlook, a cottage in the Irish countryside that he's renovated
by hand.
He's waited, sweated on this reunion. He does not like to be
alone - he's that kind of man. The flight lands, the glass doors hiss
open, and Scully's life begins to go down in flames.

My Take

This may not have been the best book to read as an audio book, because there were many passages that, had it been a paper publication, I would have re-read.

Stanley McGeagh's Irish accent, as the voice of an Australian character, took a bit of getting used to.

After Scully's wife fails to turn up on the flight, and Billie gets off the flight alone, the book is mainly about trying to locate Jennifer and to work out why she has seemingly deserted him. Billie is withdrawn and won't utter a word about where her mother is.
In the manner of the Shiralee, Scully drags his daughter through Europe looking for Jennifer, returning to places that as a family they have visited before. Some former friends rather mysteriously won't talk to him.

Circumstances dictated that we listened to THE RIDERS over a long period of time, nearly two months in fact, probably missing the significance of some events, and certainly not understanding some references. For example, it was hard to work out where the title came from. There was a passage at the very beginning about riders that I would have liked to check although I did get a little help from Wikipedia.

The novel deals with ideas of architecture, Australia, Europe, masculinity and trust. It also asks the question of self-identity, and how well you can ever truly know someone else.

The book draws on the European mythology of the Wild Hunt, hence "The Riders".

So I've come away a bit disappointed by this book, but it is probably related to the fact that we "read" it as an audio book over far too long a passage of time.
It was after all a nominee for the Man Booker Prize in 1995.

Crime Fiction Pick of the Month 2013

Many crime fiction bloggers write a summary post at the end of each
month listing what they've read, and some, like me, even go as far as
naming their pick of the month.

This meme is an attempt to aggregate those summary posts.
It is an invitation to you to write your own summary post for November 2013, identify your crime fiction best read of the month, and add your post's URL to the Mr Linky below.
If Mr Linky does not appear for you, leave the URL in a comment and I will add it myself.

You
can list all the books you've read in the past month on your post,
even if some of them are not crime fiction, but I'd like you to
nominate your crime fiction pick of the month.